


Unexpected Booty

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism), LaughingStones



Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Aphrodisiacs, Biting, Consent, Double Penetration, Drugged Sex, Hate Sex, Intoxicated Sex, M/M, Sex Toys, Sirens, Supernatural Creatures, Vampires, Werewolves, Xeno, but with a healthy jot of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 16:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingStones/pseuds/LaughingStones
Summary: In Mike's defense, the sign on the store COULD have said "automotive parts".





	Unexpected Booty

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Experiments in Cross-Species Makeouts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13993059) by [LaughingStones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingStones/pseuds/LaughingStones). 



Harley wasn’t supposed to be here.

Chuck is pointedly ignoring him as he chatters, keeping his eyes on the road and his mouth stubbornly shut on the screaming he would usually be letting out, but Harley doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“--Who we used to do exercises with? He’s retired, now that Julie’s in charge.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” says Mike, because Mike has somehow never gotten the message about shutting Harley down at every opportunity. “He was kinda a jerk. Especially to the new kids, y’know?”

“Uh--yeah!” says Harley, who definitely never noticed any such thing. Because he’s a douche. “So, he’s _whoa!_ H-he’s gone now!”

Mike lands the jump with a car-rattling _THUD_ , spins into a donut and then parks so abruptly Mutt rocks. Chuck squeaks, but at least he hears Alex make a soft whimpering noise at the same time, so he’s probably not paying attention.

“We’re here!” Mike announces, and unbuckles, swinging lanky legs out of the driver’s side door. Outside, Chuck can see the dim light of the undercity, a glowing field of blue mushrooms and a toppled maze of abandoned detritus. Mike stretches, shirt and jacket riding up his back--Chuck stares at the line of his spine for a second, then pulls his eyes away and climbs out of Mutt’s passenger’s side door, picking his way through the knee-high forest of glowing fungus. Mutt’s chassis and her wheels are glowing faintly, covered in crushed mushroom.

Somewhere behind him, Harley is swinging out of Mutt too. He comes jogging up a second later, high-stepping absurdly as he tries to avoid touching any of the mushrooms on the ground. Yeah, good luck with that, genius, they're kind of everywhere.

“Let’s get out there!” says Mike brightly, and comes around the car, slinging his scrapping satchel over his shoulder.

“Are we splitting up?” Chuck says hopefully. Mike gives him a kind of rueful smile and raises his eyebrows behind his bangs.

“Safer if we stay together, bud.”

“Definitely safer,” says Harley fervently, and then makes a startled, strangled noise and jumps back as one of the mushrooms sways a little and lets out a cloud of faint golden spores. “Are--! Are we safe?! Down here?”

“Yeah dude, sure,” says Mike, and sets out toward the distant wreckage of an ancient train car, trailing Chuck and Harley behind him. “Never hurt me. If you start to feel weird or something--eh, just say something. ‘S fine.”

Chuck, who was about three seconds from manifesting his wings and hovering above the mushrooms instead of walking through them, immediately resolves to absolutely not say anything about them under any circumstances.  Although honestly, the fact that Mike never felt any negative effects from these things doesn't mean much--werewolves are notoriously hardy.  But now that Harley's said something and gotten shot down, there's no way in hell Chuck is going to admit he's also not super comfortable with all of this.  Harley must know it, too; he glances up, sees Chuck looking back at him and looks away again, lips thin and cheeks faintly pink.

The train is collapsed over top of an ancient building; it’s mostly fallen in on itself, and the shadows underneath are pitch black, but as they get closer, vines shift and flowers open, turning toward them. Mike reaches out, pokes one of them and laughs as a pulse of light spreads out from the place he touched in bright little ripples.

“This place is so cool,” he says, and Chuck gives him a look and eyes the flowers distrustfully.

In the growing plant-based light, a sign over the door becomes visible, although it looks like the letters of the shop name must have fallen off. There's a tagline painted in smaller letters above and below where it was, some of which is still legible.

“Something ‘te parts ah’,” Chuck mutters to himself, “--’and’, probably--'auto’ something. Mike, are you sure--”

“Auto parts, dude!” Mike says. “It says it right on the sign!” and he strides straight forward into the dark like there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about in a cavern full of weirdly reactive, potentially-sentient glowing plants. Chuck shudders and edges in after him, trying to keep his distance from said plants.

Apart from the flowers, though, the collapsed store looks pretty safe. The rubble has settled, and Chuck can’t see anything that might fall down or drop on them. The flowers around the walls throw a faint, omni-directional glow over the fallen shelves, plenty bright for a werewolf, a vampire and a siren to see by, and the plants don’t seem to be moving or changing or poisoning anybody. And best of all, Harley looks totally bewildered by the entire thing.

“We’re looking for any kind of parts,” Mike calls back over his shoulder, and goes digging into the shelves. “Anything we can't use we can trade, we'll take whatever's in good shape. Chuck can check stuff for you if you want!”

Chuck and Harley share a look. Harley opens his mouth, shuts it again, rolls his eyes and starts away toward the opposite wall, kicking through the stuff behind the counter.

After five minutes of scavenging, Harley finds something. Chuck is almost sure the big, disassembled frame isn't vehicle-related, but it does seem like it could be usefully repurposed.

“Good work!” Mike says, grinning at Harley, and Harley turns pink and grins back, bouncing a little on his toes. He's so _full_ of himself, god.

Chuck glares at him and then helps Mike lift the frame, fitting it piece by piece into one of the pockets Julie put inside Mike’s bag. The pieces are awkward to maneuver, but once they get each one part of the way inside, the entire thing slides easily into a pocket the size of Mike’s palm.

“I bet Dutch will know what it's for!” Mike calls as he goes back to digging. Chuck keeps his doubts about that to himself.

A minute later Chuck unearths another mystery contraption, and is manhandling it around, frowning, when Harley notices.

“That doesn't look like a car part,” he says, coming over, and Chuck sneers at him.

“Right, because you're such an expert on cars.” It doesn't, really, but Chuck’s not about to admit it now.

“What’d you find?” Mike says, bouncing over, ears perked.

Chuck bites down on his fond smile and says, “Well, there's some kind of motor back here,” he runs his fingers over the casing, “but I can't tell what was supposed to be hooked up to it.”

“You have no idea what it is,” Harley translates, and Chuck hisses at him.

“Guys,” Mike says, disappointed. “Can you cool it? Be nice.”

Harley looks away, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Chuck huffs quietly. “Anyway. Should we--?”

“May as well take it, yeah,” Mike says with a shrug, holding open another pocket of his bag. “You and Dutch can mess with it, figure it out.”

Chuck nods, hefting the thing to work it carefully into the little opening of the pocket. Mike claps him on the shoulder and says, “Good job, dude!” and Chuck shoots Harley a smug look as soon as Mike turns away. Harley is ostentatiously not watching, digging through the debris behind the counter again.

“Let's keep looking, see if we can find the good stuff!” Mike says, returning to his rubble pile on the other side of the shop. Chuck hears something small go bouncing away. A minute later Mike goes, “…Hm.”

“What?” Harley says immediately.

“Dunno, I just… no, it’s--nothing, I’m good.” Mike straightens up for a second, scratches at the back of his neck. “A lot of these places from before the dome had a back room for magic junk--you guys think we can get some of this crud lifted off?”

“Definitely!” says Chuck, before Harley can even answer--because for one thing, hell yeah, magical junk that the Duke can’t tax them like crazy for taking! And for another, if there’s one thing Harley definitely can’t beat him at, it’s heavy lifting. Sirens are skinny, weedy little carnivores, made for low-gravity aquatic environments. It’s not like Harley can _sing_ at this mess of rubble, or manipulate the rubble, or make the rubble do what Harley wants even if it goes against the rubble’s moral code--like an _asshole._

Okay so Chuck might maybe still have a grudge, whatever. He’s tolerating Harley okay, he thinks. All things considered.

Harley isn’t exactly out of shape, though. He and Chuck clear rubble and stone furiously for a solid ten minutes, and he proves to be annoyingly sturdy. It doesn’t matter. Chuck is 100% not going to be the first one to stop and take a break.

He’s not. Mike stops working first, breathing hard. He drops the cracked chunk of concrete he was holding, sways a little and then braces himself against the nearest wall.

“Mike?” says Chuck, startled.

“I’m--fine,” Mike says, and drops his head forward, forehead pressing against the damp, overgrown stone of the wall. His voice is hoarse and rough, and when he presses a hand to the wall his nails are too sharp, dragging at the stone. “Hff. I’m. I’m good.”

“You don’t look ‘good’,” says Chuck, and hurries forward, hands hovering, not sure if he should be reaching out or not. “Your heart’s going like crazy, dude.”

“I agree with Chuck,” says Harley, and grabs Mike’s arm like it’s _no big deal,_ pulling a little bit. “Sit down.”

“Yes, _Commander,_ ” Mike says, sharp and snappy, and Harley jumps and lets go, flushing again.

“Sorry. Uh…” He scrubs his hand off on one pant-leg. “I didn’t mean--” he rallies, drawing himself back up again. “You need to rest, though! You look really pale.”

He does, too, although it’s kind of funny to say when he’s standing between two of the palest white kids in the whole city. Mike’s face is drawn and sweaty, and his eyes have turned gold, reflecting the light of the mushrooms and the glowing flowers in inhuman ways.

“Come on, dude,” says Chuck, coaxing, and when he takes Mike’s arm, Mike doesn’t pull away. “You need to sit down for a sec. We’re not doing that thing you did after the weather machine.”

“I’m not _sick,_ ” Mike protests, but he lets Chuck help him down onto a chunk of rubble. “Seriously, I just got kinda… winded, for a minute there.”

“You don’t get _winded,_ ” Chuck says, nose wrinkling. “I’ve seen you do this stuff for hours and then go spar Texas and _win._ ”

Harley looks suitably impressed by that, which is satisfying. Chuck’s about to expound a little more on some of the crazy stuff he’s seen Mike do, but Mike cuts him off by reaching up, scrubbing at his sweaty face and then shrugging casually out of his jacket. He drapes it carefully over a pile of moved rubble next to his satchel.

“Uh,” Chuck says.

“…’S _hot_ down here,” says Mike, a little defensively. His eyes are still bright yellow. Chuck tilts his head, half-listening, feeling, smelling, and feels Mike’s heart pounding hard and fast. Blood rushing. For a second his jaw aches as his fangs shift--but no, he’s fine, this would be a stupid time to ask for blood. Especially if Mike’s not feeling good. Sure, Chuck hasn’t eaten in a few days--he’s gone for longer.

“My… my implants have a field assessment kit in them?” Alex offers, a little more cautiously this time. “I can… take some vital signs?”

“I’m not _sick_!” Mike says again, half growling. A second later he’s back under control, but his fangs are _definitely_ longer now. “It’s--it’s not a full moon, right?”

“No,” says Chuck immediately--he just knows, okay, having a best friend who’s wer gives you some priorities. Like knowing when the best time is to climb in bed with Mike and get him to actually lie still and snuggle for a while. “Full moons mellow you out, bro, you’re pretty not-mellow right now.”

“I’m _mellow,_ I’m just--not feeling--can we just keep going?” Mike pushes himself up, shoulders squared and jaw jutting stubbornly. “We’re almost to the back room.”

Chuck looks him over and sighs internally. “Okay, but if you start feeling worse, you have to--”

“I'm _fine_ ,” Mike cuts him off, “quit hovering, dude!” He huffs and goes back to shifting pieces of fallen roof.

Chuck blinks and finds himself unintentionally meeting Harley’s eyes. Harley’s frowning as he reluctantly turns back to moving rubble, and Chuck is torn between continuing annoyance that he's even here and gratitude that he sees it and is concerned too, because yeah, that reaction was uncharacteristically irritable for Mike.

They work in silence, Chuck monitoring Mike’s heartbeat, listening to his rough breathing. He wobbles on his feet a few times and pauses once to swipe his forearm across his sweaty face. However unsteady he is, he doesn't quite lose his balance, so Chuck doesn't reach out to catch him. Hopefully Mike hasn't noticed he's poised and ready to.

Eventually Chuck heaves aside the last big chunk of rubble blocking the doorway, clearing enough space for Mike to scramble through. Harley’s close on his heels, hands raised in a way that's nowhere near as subtle as he probably thinks, ready to steady Mike if he needs it. Like Mike would even let him. Chuck curls his lip in a silent snarl and follows them in.

The back room is almost completely intact. At first, glancing around, Chuck wonders if Mike got it wrong and this was actually a break room. It's got two battered sofas and a torn beanbag, a counter and a rack above it that still has a number of chipped mugs hanging from it. Then he sees the shelves Mike’s making a beeline for.

“Heck yeah,” Mike says, breathless, “feel the magic coming off this… stuff. Uh.” He stumbles to a halt, staring at the floor by his feet.

“What is it?” Harley asks, and comes up to his elbow, glancing down.

Blocked by one sofa, Chuck can't see what he's staring at, but he can see Harley’s face turn red, eyes wide. Huffing annoyance, Chuck rounds the sofa and looks down.

“I don't think this is what we're lookin’ for,” Mike mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck and shifting his weight. He's looking a little flushed too.

Chuck has to cough before he can agree without squeaking. His face is hot and he knows he's got to be as red as Harley, which is totally not his fault because that is an enchanted _dildo_. Still in its original packaging and thus potentially still functional, as his brain helpfully points out.

“That's a…” Harley says, and swallows. “Oh. So, uh.” He looks around. “Are… are these _all_ \--?”

Chuck follows his glance at the boxes scattered across the floor, probably shaken off the shelves when the rest of the building fell in. Others still lie in ranks on the shelves.

“All sex toys?” he says as crisply as he can manage and with the showy, academic flourish to his voice that he’s learned drives Harley up the fucking wall. “Uh, yeah, Harley, that does seem like a _fairly_ straightforward deduction.” He picks his way across the floor to the shelves, reading the packaging on the toys.

“Oh my god, _parts_ ,” Harley says in a strangled voice. “What the heck did it say on that sign?!”

“Not 'automotive’, I guess,” Mike mutters.

Harley makes a choked noise and blurts out, “Autoerotica!”

Which is a reasonable guess, Chuck _supposes_ , but he wishes Harley would just keep his mouth shut.

“Oh, my mistake,” he says, cautiously picking an empty box off the floor. “It’s sex toys and _other_ paraphernalia. Like items imbued with, uh, sensitivity spells, why not. “‘ _Good for ten to fifteen uses’_ ,” he reads off the box. It goes on ‘ _Quick-acting! Every touch is orgasmic!_ ’ but he's not saying that out loud.

“‘ _A night’s fun for the whole party at the tap of a finger’_ ,” he finishes. “Geez. Put it in a safer box, why don’t you.” He drops the empty box back on the ground where it apparently fell, but he can’t quite stop himself from glancing around for whatever used to be in it. He spots it across the floor, a little cube in blue with a design stamped around the middle. Other empty boxes and freed toys are lying among the still packaged ones on the floor, a regular minefield if they're all touch-activated. Although they probably need skin contact, so hopefully just kicking one by mistake won't do anything.

“So,” Harley says, and Chuck turns to find him still flushed, eyes skittering from one box to another on the floor, fixing for a minute and then pulling away again. “Maybe we shouldn't have been expecting to find car parts in the front room, I'm guessing.”

That's, um, a point. Chuck wonders abruptly what the two things they put in Mike’s bag were actually for, and belatedly scrubs his hands on his jeans, face hot.

Brushing that aside, he's about to make a snide comment to Harley about what a treasure trove this place must be for a guy who never gets lucky, and Harley must see it coming because he's already glaring. Before either of them can make the first dig, though, Mike makes this weird little cut off noise and sags against the back of the sofa.

“You okay, bro?” Chuck says.

Mike looks even less okay than he did, cheeks flushed and sweaty, gold eyes dazed. He leans against the sofa, panting, one hand tugging at the neck of his shirt, and Chuck can't tell if he's feeling constrained by it or overheated. He doesn't answer Chuck.

“Mike?” Harley says a second before Chuck would have, and he spares a moment to glare. Harley’s not paying attention.

“Wha?” Mike mumbles, still pulling at his t-shirt, and then he just hauls it over his head and drops it on the floor.

Harley goes very satisfyingly wide-eyed and flushed and stares for too long before tearing his eyes away, but Chuck is actually distracted from the half-naked Mike by anxiety. He dropped his shirt on the _floor_. Mike isn't _obsessively_ neat, but he's pretty tidy by nature; he folds his clothes as soon as he takes them off. Whatever’s going on with him, it's got him really distracted from his normal priorities.

Well, it's got him distracted from _talking_ , too, so maybe Chuck shouldn't be surprised.

“Mikey,” he says a little sharply. “What's going on, bro? Come on, you said you'd mention it if you started feeling worse!”

Mike blinks at him and shifts where he's perched on the back of the sofa, wriggling uncomfortably. “‘M hot,” he says, one hand going to the back of his neck again. This time his fingers tighten, squeezing, and Chuck’s eyes round as the full picture finally snaps into focus for him.

“No,” he says. “No way, come on, your heat isn't due again for ages! Mikey, tell me you're not…” he trails off, staring helplessly.

Mike doesn't seem to be listening; his hips rock once, twice, and his breathing is soft but harsh in the quiet room. When he lets out a soft whine it goes straight down Chuck’s spine, pulling heat up in its wake.

“Oh my god,” Harley says, “he's in _heat?_ ”

“No!” Chuck snaps, hands curling into fists. “Wouldn't you just love that!”

Harley goes red again, flicking a glance at Mike, who is definitely not paying attention and still has no idea about his stupid little crush. “Like you wouldn't!” he snaps back. “And anyway, if he's not in heat then why is he--” He stops abruptly, looking at the toys scattered over the floor.

“It's not… hmm,” Chuck says, looking too. “This isn't quick-acting, but… yeah, another touch-activated thing, maybe. But it can't be anything in here, he was already affected when we were clearing the doorway.”

“So he must've run into something out there,” Harley says. “I’ll just go, uh…” He backs away toward the rubble, poking around, throwing covert glances back over his shoulder as he goes.

Chuck is still glaring after Harley when a hand touches his shoulder, clinging to his sleeve.

“We gotta get you back to the hideout,” Chuck says, and turns back. “Whatever you touched, we can find some kind of--some kind of… uh… M-Mike?”

Pupils wide and black in his gold eyes, Mike sways on his feet and whimpers at the back of his throat. He's staring at Chuck, but it's hard to tell if he's even recognizing him, he's not _talking_. He tugs on Chuck’s sleeve, eyes pleading, and steps closer. Like, much closer. Like, practically chest to chest. His lips part as he breathes in, scenting Chuck, and he makes a quiet rough noise, satisfied, and then an almost subvocal whine, ears lowering submissively.

Which is. Wow. Which is _something,_ but also… kinda freaky. “Mike,” says Chuck firmly, and detaches his hand from Chuck’s sleeve. Mike whines again. “Dude, talk to me. What the heck is up with you right now?”

“I thought you said it was heat,” interjects Harley from across the room. Chuck glares at him and bares his fangs and Harley rolls his eyes and raises his hands in dramatic surrender, going back to kicking at the junk on the floor.

“It looks like it, but it’s-- _not,_ ” Chuck says, frustrated, and gives Mike a sharp little shake. “Mike! English, bro.”

Mike whimpers a couple times, pawing at Chuck’s arms to cling to him. He gasps for breath.

“ _Hnnh_ , ah, can't… think, hurts. Please, I… need--” he breaks off, blinking like he's lost the words, groans and grabs Chuck’s hand to plant it on the bare skin of his belly. Then he sags all over, sighing. “That,” he finishes belatedly. “You to… touch me.”

Oh boy, oh god. “We should… go back to the hideout,” Chuck says again, more weakly this time, because holy shit. Last time they had more warning than this, time for Mike to shyly approach Chuck, time for them to figure things out, last time they had a dark, quiet room to themselves, somewhere soft to curl up together and--

 _Last_ time, Alex Harley wasn't here, staring over from the other corner of the room with round, bright blue eyes and a vivid blush on his face. Chuck manifests his wings with a sullen flick, glares pointedly at Harley and wraps them around Mike so he’s hidden from view.

“…We can’t do this here, bro,” he says, as gently as he can, and tries to pull his hand away from Mike’s skin. Mike’s grip on his wrist tightens abruptly. “ _Mike,_ we gotta get home first. Can you just--hang on, for like ten minutes?”

Mike stares at him for way too long, squinting a little like even focusing on the words takes all the concentration he's got. Then he makes this little shaky noise and shakes his head fast, trying to step in to Chuck, press up against him.

“Can't, I can't, I--please don't stop, you gotta--please--” He leans in to nuzzle against Chuck’s jaw.

“Did you just say ‘home’?” Harley interjects from across the room. Chuck hisses at him, shoulders tensing and wings mantling, but Harley’s seen that show before and it only makes him flinch for a second before he’s stepping forward again, arms crossed. “You think he can _drive_ in this condition?”

Oh. Shit, right. “I can… drive,” Chuck says, even though the words make his stomach sink nastily. “I can drive! I’m… a driver.” And that wrings another discontented noise out of Mike, of course. “Sorry, dude! I’ll be really careful with Mutt, I swear, and… and you’ll feel better once we get back to the hideout and we can…” he glances back, but there’s no good way to say it, not with Harley there. “…We can take care of this. You. There. Okay?”

“ _Oh,_ ” says Harley, really quiet and strangled.

Mike takes a couple of breaths, one hand on Chuck’s shoulder, one holding tight to his wrist. He's leaning heavily on Chuck, unsteady on his feet, and he's still flushed from his cheeks down to his chest, pressing close and needy. It's not like _not_ touching him is easy for Chuck, here.

“Okay,” he says, gold eyes anxious. “But I dunno if… I, I don't think I can make it without somebody… uh.” He presses further into the hand on him, swallows hard enough Chuck can see his throat work. “...Mm…”

…Chuck definitely can't do that _and_ drive. Especially if _touching_ is more like _getting started_ , which from the way Mike’s shifting it probably is. Chuck’s good at multi-tasking, but he’s not… that good.

“I can, uh.” Harley clears his throat, and Chuck _knows_ what he’s going to say, he can almost tell before he turns around and sees the look on the guy’s face. Hopeful and intrigued and trying to pretend he doesn’t care one way or the other, the _asshole._ “I have. Hands.”

Chuck was already holding Mike up, trying to keep him steady on his feet--now he’s holding on even tighter, for way more important reasons. “Uh, _no?_ ”

“You’ve worked in Research and Development!” Harley protests, “You know people can… _help each other out_ with--”

“Yeah, but not you!” Chuck snaps. “--And not Mike! And not--you and Mike!”

Mike bites his lip with sharp white teeth, blinking over at Harley like he's thinking about it. Even while he's leaning into Chuck, holding on to him with desperate strength and trying to press closer like he can push through Chuck’s clothes to the skin underneath, he's thinking about Harley’s hands on him, considering it. Maybe he's not really in heat, but his body doesn't know that, it's telling him he can't afford to be picky right now.

Well that’s--no, absolutely not. It would be hard enough driving home alone, just Chuck trying to stay on the road and Mike twitching and panting in the passenger’s seat, he’s not going to drive all the way back to the hideout with _Harley_ sitting next to him taking advantage of his best friend. Absolutely fucking not.

Chuck distracts him by leaning forward, getting a solid grip on Mike’s hips and kissing him, hard.

Mike jerks all over and moans into the kiss, louder than Chuck expected, and melts against Chuck. His hands go around Chuck’s back, kneading, holding him close. He seems content for all of a minute before his hips twitch under Chuck’s hands, grinding against him with a breathy sound.

“Harley,” says Chuck, and hears his voice come out a lot hoarser and shakier than usual, slurred around extending fangs. “Get out.”

“But--” Harley isn’t exactly sounding at 100% either. There’s a note of something inhuman under his voice--not compelling, pushing, but kind of… inviting. “I mean, I could still… help, uh…”

Mike’s heart speeds up a little at that. Chuck ignores it, mantles his wings pointedly around both of them and takes a second or two to indulge himself, burying his nose in Mike’s neck and breathing in the scent of him.The feeling of his pulse, strong and hard under the thin skin of his throat…

Shit, no, but he drank from Mike last time at the beginning of his heat, and it put both of them out of commission all day. Chuck’s got to be the… what was that old phrase--the _designated driver_ here. God knows he doesn’t trust Harley to handle it.

Speaking of Harley…

“I said _go,_ ” Chuck growls, without looking around. He can feel Harley’s heart pounding from all the way across the room. “Go… wait in the car or something.”

“Uh… _No?_ ” Harley sounds affronted by the very idea. “You have no idea what kind of spell this is! What if it--infects you, next? How are you getting out of this, then?”

That’s… not a bad point, dammit. If it’s going to spread through touch, Chuck’s already going down. And if it hits him as hard as it hit Mike, he’s not going to be any good to drive.

“I’m going to keep looking through the… stuff on the ground,” Harley says, and Chuck hears footsteps move away from him, things rattling on the floor as Harley kicks through the pile of debris still in the doorway. “I’ll just, uh. I won’t, um. Good… luck?” he says over his shoulder, and turns away.

Mike buries his face in Chuck’s neck and breathes in, then nips, humming low in his chest. His hips are grinding steadily against Chuck’s and one hand slides up Chuck’s back to brush along the base of one wing. Chuck shivers as a sharp nail traces the place where web meets muscle, and then catches his breath as the motion presses him up a little harder against Mike’s solid warmth.

It's kind of weird to have Mike so nonverbal, when normally he only gets that way in the middle of… things. He keeps making hungry little growls and murmurs, and when he lets go of Chuck to tug at the fastening of his jeans with shaky hands it's not even a surprise.

“Okay,” Chuck mumbles, and detaches Mike’s hands carefully. “Okay, okay, bro, I know. I gotcha. Here, let me…”

It’s hard to pull away, and not just because Mike’s skin is hot and his heart is pounding and he smells like want and warmth. He’s clinging on desperately, making faint noises when Chuck tries to step away. Eventually Chuck just has to take his wrist, leading him instead of leaving him; Mike trails hopefully behind him as Chuck grabs the old, battered couches and heaves on them, pulling them together into something almost like a bed.

“Now,” he has time to say, and then he’s toppling backwards over the arm of the nearest couch as Mike crowds back up into his space. His wings slam against the backs and armrests of the couches, and he hisses in pain and hastily pulls them in again.

Mike crawls after to straddle him and leans down to rub his cheek against Chuck’s jaw, fervent and apologetic even though his hands are already pushing under Chuck’s shirt and plucking distractedly at his jeans. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and it's a shock to hear him talking again. “Sorry, didn't mean--you okay?”

Of course, even as he asks, he's half-lying on Chuck to rub his body on Chuck’s, a sinuous ripple from his chest down to his hips. He's vaguely coherent, but he's still not exactly firing on all cylinders.

“I’m--fine, _hff,_ yeah.” Ahhh, god, even when Mike's half out of it, Chuck loves him a lot. His weird, wer instincts, his beautiful smile, his big, anxious golden-brown eyes.

“So,” Chuck says, and grabs Mike, pulling him over and around, pressing him down on the cushions. Takes the opportunity to rest his weight down and back, rocking gently on Mike’s lap so Mike clutches at him, moaning. “So, does, does it feel like heat, exactly the same, or…?”

Mike’s hands work on Chuck’s hips as he gasps for breath, struggling almost visibly for words. “Feels… like heat, yeah. Exactly? I… dunno? Can't tell,” he pants, and tries to fumble Chuck’s jeans open, hips rolling up against him.

“Because,” Chuck says, with an effort. Keeping his voice steady takes a lot of work, but it’s his job to be the one in control here. “If, _hhh_ , if it’s like heat, we probably just need to treat it the way we treated your heat, right?” And if it isn’t, then god knows what’ll stop it. Chuck’s not a magical expert, and Julie’s not here to help--oh, god, that’s a thought. Jeez. Why couldn’t they have brought Julie instead of Harley?

“Yeah, please,” Mike says, “please, need you, want you in me--” He breaks off with a hungry noise, and one hand dives into Chuck’s opened jeans to wrap around his dick and stroke.

\--

Alex can’t hear whatever Mike just mumbled, but he definitely hears the breathless, choking little gasp Chuck gives in response. His stomach gives a hot, guilty lurch and he edges further away from the couches, doing his best to focus on the piles of fallen rubble and not on the noises from behind him.

It’s just as well, really. The idea of Mike… in heat--it’s really good, like, really really good, but if it’s always like this then Alex doesn’t want to get anywhere near it. It feels too familiar, the way Mike’s eyes went hazy and he stopped being able to make words. Familiar enough Alex has to keep checking to make sure he isn’t singing when he talks, isn’t accidentally dragging Mike back under his control.

Alex gives a piece of rubble a vengeful kick and then yelps in unintentional chorus with Chuck as something small and round comes bouncing out of the pile of rocks outside the door. It bounces high, glinting-- _like fish scales CATCH IT_ \--and Alex snatches it out of the air.

It’s a ball the size of his palm, made of what looks like dark red polymer. As Alex touches it, the surface of it goes deep silver--a perfect shade to blend in with the fallen stone around it. As Alex stares at it, it starts to fade toward pink again and a hot, weird shiver creeps across his skin.

“Uh,” he says. “...Mike?”

There's a moan from Mike from behind him, and then a breathless interrogative noise. Less than coherent, although at least he responded. Alex bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut and tries to focus.

“I think I. Found something,” he says, as evenly as he can manage.

“Not--the _time,_ ” pants Chuck sharply, and gives a weird, inhuman clicking sound that melts into a groan. “ _Ah--_ nnh, get _out._ ”

“But--”

Alex opens his mouth, and then closes it again, glaring, and goes back to kicking through the rubble. Fine then, if they don’t want to hear about it Alex will just--keep having a boner over here, on his own. Screw them.

He has every intention of stepping out and going to sulk in the car by himself until it’s all over. Except his eyes just caught a strange, regular corner in the irregular rubble piled in the doorway. It looks like the corner of a display case, crumpled over under the fallen concrete, and Alex’s brain is working now--even as a kind of hot tingling starts to spread through his body. The case fell, its contents got buried. So somewhere in here, there should be packaging for it. Maybe even some kind of off-switch for this, because as much as Alex has wistfully imagined scenes involving the three of them, none of those scenes involved wandering around the edges of the room kicking at sex toys while Mike and Chuck made out on a couch. The role Alex played in those fantasies was a lot more… central, and wow he should _really_ not be thinking about that right now.

Ignoring the heat pooling in his gut, he starts shuffling through the rubble in the doorway with more attention, shifting pieces aside and checking for crushed boxes, torn pieces of cardboard--basically anything with printing on it. He finds one empty package, but tosses it aside when he sees the item pictured is bright green. The ball Mike touched is red or silver.

He keeps looking, moving rubble with less care as the thrumming need under his skin gets stronger, harder to ignore. Chuck is making little breathless moans and gasps, Alex can hear Mike's rough breathing behind him, and it's really, really distracting.

Finally he sees the picture of a silver ball on another bright package caught under more debris and shoves at the pile to clear it off. Leaning down to grab the flattened box, he puts out a hand for support. It lands on a surface that shifts and rolls under his fingers, and even as he jerks back a weird little shockwave goes through his hand, travels up his arm and sweeps across the rest of his body, leaving him breathless and wide-eyed.

That… seems like not a good thing.

He pushes aside the debris overshadowing the hollow his hand found and uncovers a little cluster of spheres and a couple of other items in various colors, a pyramid, some cubes, a cone. Most of them are slowly changing color as he watches. He glances at the first sphere he found and the pink is still gradually darkening, a deep rosy magenta just now.

O...kay.

He swallows, noticing again how hard his heart is beating. The skin all over his body is prickling, his clothes feel rough and heavy, smothering, and the sudden temptation to rip his clothes off is alarming, but--it’s probably just psychosomatic. With that many different spells colliding, they can't have all taken effect, some of them probably just slid off the others and some would counter each other's effects, logically. He's fine, this is fine.

It takes more concentration to keep his balance now, his knees keep wanting to give and his head spins now and then. Retrieving the box he was going after originally, he leans on the doorframe and skims the information printed on it.

Basic aphrodisiac spell… duration of one to two hours… oh. Huh. Mike should definitely not have touched this thing. Alex reads the rest of the print on the package, clears his throat, and starts to convey the information to Chuck.

Chuck is less than receptive, but this is important! Alex keeps trying, at least for a little while.

\--

Mike's flat on his back with Chuck straddling him, just enough room between them for Mike's hands to move on Chuck. Mike is vaguely aware that Alex has been talking, but he hasn't been paying attention. Then Chuck lets out an irritated hiss and snaps, “Okay but _seriously_ , Harley, can you shut the fuck up right now?”

Mike twitches and gives Chuck a reproachful look, hand going still on his dick. “Hey. Not cool,” he says breathlessly, and licks his hand to get it wet again. He gets distracted chasing Chuck's taste across his skin, then remembers what he's doing and goes back to stroking Chuck slow and good, just like he likes. He doesn't have any lube, but if he can just get Chuck wet enough, that'll work fine. He just has to convince Chuck.

“Wanna taste you,” he mutters, and shakes his head once against the couch cushions. “Later, though, we gotta--Chuck, can we? You're ready, we’re good, can I just--I want it, buddy, whatever you want, just--please?”

Chuck makes this long, pretty, groaning noise and his big, dark pupils widen even further, but Mike can tell before he even opens his mouth he’s going to say-- “--No, Mike, _hh,_ it’s not--I bet, I mean, if there’s not lube in here, there’s some in Mutt, if you wanna, uh--I can go get--” and he starts to shift his weight, sitting upright again, the _opposite_ of what Mike was going for.

“No!” Mike grabs at him with his free hand, holds him here, close where he's needed. “No, yeah, hey--” he turns his head on the couch, craning around toward Alex, off in a corner behind him. “Is there lube, dude?”

Alex makes a really funny noise that actually kind of sounds like a noise Chuck would make, and then goes “ _What?!_ ” in this kind of high siren shriek.

Chuck snickers and then groans as Mike rubs a thumb across the tip of his dick. “Ah _hahaha,_ he said, if--you’re gonna be here _spying,_ at least go--get some lube,” he says, hissing through his teeth. “And then _fuck off!_ ”

“Chuckles,” Mike says. “Come on, dude, be nice.” He looks over hopefully at Alex, who's staring at the two of them red-faced. He meets Mike's eyes and startles before turning hastily away.

“I'll, um, look around,” he mumbles, and starts poking through rubble again.

“Thanks!” Mike says, pleased. He slows his hand on Chuck a little more, relaxing. There's no hurry, they can take things slow, everything's fine.

A few minutes later he blinks. Alex kept talking on and off the last little while until Chuck yelled at him. Mike wasn't listening, but he probably should've been. He's the leader, after all, he needs to listen to the reports he gets.

“Hey,” he says over toward Alex, “sorry I missed what you were saying earlier. What was it?”

Chuck, who’s been applying himself studiously to nipping up and down Mike’s neck and leisurely licking up drops of blood, groans into his newest bite. Alex stops for a second, huffs and then--by the rattling noise--kicks something across the room. “Oh, nothing!” he says, kinda sniffily. There’s a weird edge to his voice Mike hasn’t heard there before, underneath how sulky he sounds. “Just something about how I found the packaging of the thing you touched! And you’re not supposed to touch it if you’re a species that has a heat cycle! But nothing _important_! Hff.”

“... _Nothing important,_ ” Chuck repeats blearily against Mike’s neck, and takes another long pull of blood. He’s getting more flushed the longer he drinks, squirming a little bit into Mike’s hand on his dick. “...Ignore him, dude…”

“Wait, though,” Mike says, blinking. “That… _does_ sound kind of important.” It's weird, he keeps losing his train of thought, forgetting what he's concerned about, and then it all smacks back into him, like some kind of uncomfortable rubber band toy. Every time he remembers, the concern gets a little more urgent, more edgy. It's not much fun, and the clearer-thinking concerned times seem to be lasting longer than the happy, floaty turned-on times now.

“What, um, did it say why those people shouldn't touch it?” He has the feeling the answer is just out of reach, that if he wasn't still so distracted by wanting Chuck, he'd know already.

“Heat magic,” Chuck says, before Alex can even start. Trying to explain first, like he always does when Mike needs to know something. He licks Mike’s neck again, a long, hot strip, and oh, wow, that feels really nice. “Sex magic, is, uh, follows the principle of--it layers, and--mm. ‘S too strong, it’ll mess up your cycle. And.” He sounds distracted, now, not rolling his hips against Mike anymore. “--Heat is a magical function, so sex magic might even make it stronger than normal, especially for somebody who’s still in their prime breeding age range--”

“Like me,” Mike says, frowning and trying to think past the clinging haze. “So. Wait, so am I actually in heat now? Is this just the spell, or… did the spell trigger my heat?”

“It’s just the spell,” says Alex. He sounds… kind of bitter. What, does he want Mike in heat or something? Some people are kind of weird about the werewolf thing-- “It's just stronger than usual, but it’s going to wear off in a couple of minutes here.”

Mike blinks again, shakes his head. The haze is almost completely gone, and suddenly he feels a little silly to have been pestering Chuck for sex in the middle of a ruined shop in the undercity. Not really a good time for it. He lets go of Chuck’s dick with an apologetic look, leaning up on one elbow to lick his hand off. That still tastes really good, though, _smells_ really good--stop. Save it for later.

“Yeah, I… I think it already is,” he answers Alex. Then he catches up and glances over his shoulder, surprised. “How do you know, is the spell supposed to be that short?”

“No,” says Alex, with half a laugh. “Ha! No! I wish! No! I tried to tell you--mmmm… like _ten minutes ago,_ I touched it by accident!”

Chuck bursts out laughing. Alex hisses at him, a soft little inhuman noise without the chirring undertone of Chuck’s hisses. Chuck doesn’t seem to notice--he’s too busy laughing, forehead pressed against Mike’s shoulder, breath warm and ticklish.

“I’m glad somebody thinks it’s _funny_ ,” says Alex acidly, and he staggers a little, leaning on one of the half-fallen walls. “These should have been--shelved more carefully.”

“You touched it,” Mike says, trying to track, “and now it's fading off me. It only works on one person at a time. Okay, so… how do you make it stop without someone else touching it?”

Alex groans again. “How--do--you-- _think?_ ” he growls.

Mike frowns a second and then his stomach twists as he gets it. Chuck’s snickering, which was starting to die off a little bit, rises again. It doesn’t sound like nice laughter.

“Good luck with that!” Chuck gasps. “Have fun! Ha--”

“ _Chuck_ ,” Mike says quietly. He's not smiling when he meets those dark eyes, this isn't funny. “What's he supposed to do? That spell _sucks_ , dude, you just want to leave him to suffer? I know you don't like him, but come on! It's not like, I mean, you guys _did_ \--”

“We did _not!_ ” Chuck cuts in, high-pitched with embarrassment and abruptly not amused anymore. “We never--that was _one time_! And we didn’t!”

Across the room, Alex makes a quiet, strangled noise, but doesn’t object. “It’s fine!” he says, making a pretty heroic effort to keep his voice casual and steady. He mostly just sounds high-pitched and breathless. “...Nnno, it’s, hh, it’s fine. The other ones c-cancel it out. Probably.”

Mike twists around to frown at him. “The other ones?” he asks, and glances around that corner of the room. He spots the cleared patch with the cluster of freed spheres and cubes and other things and his mouth opens. “...Oh,” he says. “Oh geez. _Crap_ , dude, do you even know what those do?” Alex doesn't look like anything useful is being cancelled out, to be honest. His pale face is flushed, the neon blue of his eyes is almost drowned by the darkness of his pupils. He’s leaning against the wall, half turned away, but now that Mike’s arousal is waning a little he can smell the musty dampness of the room again and there’s a strain of hot want in the air that isn’t coming from Mike _or_ Chuck.

“You _asshole,_ ” Chuck says, and pushes himself up off Mike’s chest to scowl at Alex. “What did you stick your hands in?!”

“I, I don’t.” Alex clenches his hands at his sides, shifts his weight uneasily. “I don’t knnnnow, can we, can I just, _hhh._ I’m fine, I can. I can control it.”

Mike sighs and sits up, rubbing a hand over his face. He's still turned on and kind of itchy with it, but he's not desperate anymore, and now that he's thinking more clearly some things are obvious. Like the fact that that was definitely worse than heat. Heat is pretty intense, yeah, but Mike's never stopped being able to _talk_ before, never been so overridden by instinct and need that he couldn't string words together.

“If you touched the same thing as me,” he says slowly, “and then some other stuff too… I don't think you can control it, dude. I couldn't, and I only touched one of those things.”

“ _Oh, for fuck’s sake,_ ” Chuck mutters, and shoves himself up with bad grace, tugging his jeans back in order. “Okay! Okay. Just--find the packaging for the new spells, or something! Or I’m shoving you in Mutt and we’re going back to the hideout so Julie can figure you out.”

The look on Alex’s face at the words _so Julie can figure you out_ is kind of funny. Jeez, why is he so scared of Julie, still?

Mike climbs off the sort of sofa-bed Chuck made and looks around. He probably ought to put his t-shirt back on, wherever it is, but he's still hot, so. Whatever. It's not like Chuck minds, and Alex is distracted anyway.

The boxes probably would be over near where Alex found the spheres and things, right? That makes sense. Mike goes over and starts shifting rubble again, looking for boxes. Alex stares at him, licks his lips, looks away again. Turns back and starts pushing kind of dazedly at the rubble. He’s really flushed now, there’s a visible sheen of sweat on his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Every couple of seconds he twitches and reaches up, tugging at his shirt or rubbing his hands distractedly over his shaved head.

Chuck has just dragged himself over to start looking too, grumbling to himself under his breath, when Alex gives a long, terrible groaning sound, raises his hands and claws them down through the air. Mike jumps at the sudden movement, and then stares as illusion shimmers away from Alex’s skin like a heat haze.

“Sorry,” Alex pants, and ducks his head like he can hide the flushed, fluttering fins, the faint sheen of iridescent scales on his cheeks. “...’S. It’s hot. Couldn’t breathe in there.”

Mike blinks. “You don't have to apologize, dude,” he says. “Nobody down here’s gonna be scared of you or anything. Heck, you don't have to put that back on unless you want to!”

He can't help looking Alex over. He's never seen the guy actually looking like a siren before, it's kind of neat. The ear fins are really cute.

Grinning, he claps Alex on the shoulder. “Looks good on you,” he says, and turns back to the search.

Chuck makes a scathing little noise that Mike only ever hears him make around Alex, and then inserts himself deliberately between Mike and Harley and starts aggressively yanking at chunks of rock. “Which ones did you touch?” he snaps, after a second. “There’s a ton in here.”

“Uh…” Alex swallows audibly, with a weird little gulping click that must be coming from the gills flaring on his neck. “Uh, a few of the round ones. And a pyramid. And two of the cubes. I think.”

“Well, we know what the round ones do,” Chuck grumbles, and reaches out, with the utmost delicacy, to pluck a box out of the pile of fallen toys. “The pyramid ones are--oh!” Mike can’t see his face but he can almost see his eyebrows rising. “ _Fertility,_ that’s… interesting. Shouldn’t do much to you, at least. You got off easy.”

“Mm!” says Alex, with slightly manic interest. “Yeah, definitely got off! Easy!”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Guys,” he says. “Can't you, like, call a truce or something for five minutes? You must've done it before, right, I mean…” They can't have had sex while sniping at each other the whole time, right? Nobody would have fun like that.

“Wait,” says Chuck, ignoring him, and picks up a bent piece of rebar, poking at the pile. “Wait, you mean these… these ones? The cubes?”

“Uh?” says Alex. The smell in the air is getting stronger, sweat and want and desperation. “Yyyeah. I don’t know. I, yeah.”

“Oh, well, mystery solved,” says Chuck. “Those are just sensitivity spells. You’ll be… fine.”

Mike turns to stare at him. “Chuckles…” That's the thing Chuck found when they first got back here, and Mike may have been super distracted at the time, but he's almost sure that doesn't mean Alex is _fine_.

He's getting a little annoyed with this vendetta. Lips tight, he waves a hand at Alex without taking his eyes off Chuck and says, “Seriously? Does he _look_ fine? I know you can hear his heartbeat. I can't, but,” he breathes in, scenting the need coming off Alex in waves, “I can tell he's in rough shape. You can't just ignore that because you've got a stupid grudge against him.”

“Yeah, but-- _Mike--_ ”

“--’S right, ‘m fine,” Alex says, and then almost immediately staggers. Sits down hard on the rubble. For a long second he just sits there, swaying back and forth a little bit--then, abruptly, he pushes himself up. “I’m gonna just… I’m gonna go and…”

“Dude,” Mike says in exasperation, “you can barely stand, you think you can walk well enough to go anywhere?” He shakes his head, trying to think. He'd suggest he and Chuck just leave Alex to take care of himself for a while, but when the spell was on Mike, what he needed was someone else's touch. Trying to fix the problem himself would've been as useless as it is when he's in heat. Although Alex did say the spell was worse for Mike, so maybe--

“Do you need help,” he asks as steadily as he can, “or do you--does it feel like you can, you know, take care of this okay on your own?”

He waits as Alex's odd sireny pupils dilate and his eyes slide in and out of focus, Alex breathing hard and taking a while to find words. “Because if you need help,” Mike says after a minute, shrugging, “I mean,” he glances at Chuck, staring at him with tight lips and flushed cheeks, rolls his eyes and looks away again. “ _I'm_ right here, anyway.” Alex is a fun guy, Mike likes him, he doesn't mind helping him out.

“ _What?_ ” says Chuck.

“ _Oh_ ,” says Alex.

“Dude!” says Chuck.

“ _God_ ,” says Alex.

“ _What_ , Chuck?” Mike says, looking away from Alex to frown. Chuck's his best friend, he's--he's really important, like _super_ important to Mike, but he's also kind of being a total dick about this. But Mike already pointed that out, and Chuck didn't seem to care, so there's no point arguing about it.

...Except Chuck doesn’t exactly look… _angry_ now, not like he just wants Alex to suffer or something. He’s going kind of red, actually, and there’s something a lot like fear in the way he’s glancing back and forth between Mike and Alex. Worry, maybe. It’s hard to read, when most of his face is covered by hair.

“You don’t have to--” he starts, and stops, starts again. “If somebody’s gonna--I, I mean--look, I can handle it, you go back to Mutt.” He doesn’t say it out loud, but the words _I don’t trust him alone with you_ might as well be written across his face when he brushes his bangs back and gives Alex a narrow-eyed, thin-lipped glare. “I can handle him.”

Mike lets out a silent sigh, looking Alex over again himself. Those bright blue eyes are hazy and lost and he looks like he's clinging to his last speck of control and awareness. The guy's been a lot better since Mike… made some things clear, that one time. He hasn't used his voice once on Mike, not even by mistake, and the few times he's been around when something's going down, the suggestions he's made haven't been unsettling bad-guy-like solutions. He's been cool, and even if under the influence of these spells he does lose his grip enough to try using his voice, without the stupid mind-control collar Mike can shake it off way easier than Chuck can. Not that pointing that out has ever worked before.

“Yeah, no,” Mike says. “I dunno how the heck you guys managed before when you can barely have a civil conversation, but there's no way leaving you alone together is a good plan. I'm staying right here.” Because he does actually know what tact is, he doesn't say straight out _I'm not leaving him at your mercy like this_.

“But-- _Mike_ ,” Chuck starts, and then cuts off as Alex lets out a long, pure sound of desperation and jerks into motion, tugging desperately at the collar of his shirt, yanking it over his head with shaking hands. “Hey!”

“Sorry,” Alex mumbles, and throws his shirt away, shivering in the cool air. His skin is flushed strange lavender-pink all the way down to his shoulders, and the gills on his sides and throat are flexing and flapping like a fish out of water. “Ah _hah!_ ‘M sorry, please, _fuck,_ please, I need--I _need,_ I, _hh--”_

“... _You stupid fucking_ disaster,” Chuck mumbles, quiet enough that Mike wouldn’t have heard if he wasn't wer--then Chuck is sighing and striding over, fists balled at his sides like he’s bracing himself to march into a fight. “Okay! Stop-- _Stop_ , you’re gonna claw up your gills. Get up. We’re not doing this on the floor.”

 _Doing this_ , wow, yeah--reminded, Mike does a quick circuit of the room, stepping carefully and kicking toys and boxes out of his way with safely booted feet. He finds several boxed bottles of lube shoved to the back of a shelf of dildos and when he checks, one of them is free of any spells or anything, so he brings it back. They're gonna need that.

By the time he gets back to the couches, Chuck has Alex laid out on one of them. He’s--well, it looks like he’s _kind of_ helping Alex get his pants off, but mostly he’s sitting on Alex’s thighs, trailing his fingers over Alex’s chest and stomach to make him thrash and gasp. There’s a weird look on his face, like--not _mean,_ not quite, just angry and fascinated and curious and _really_ turned on.

Okay, Mike amends mentally, as Chuck pinches a nipple and Alex squeaks. Maybe a little bit mean.

“Dude,” he says mildly. “Come on, we're _helping_ , right?” He climbs onto the other sofa next to them, puts a hand on Alex's chest and blinks when he gasps and arches into it. Sensitivity _and_ desperation, right, okay.

“Hey,” he says, hoping Alex can manage some kind of coherence. “What do you want?”

“Want,” Alex echoes, fast and cracked like it’s being pulled out him by force. He blinks up at Mike for a second, mouthing silently, blinking too fast--two pairs of eyelids, pupils all strange. “I, I want, need _hhh_. Please…”

“He doesn’t know what he wants,” Chuck says, not… _entirely_ unkindly, and grabs Alex’s wrist as he goes for his jeans again, nails intimidatingly longer without the illusion. “Hey, _easy._ You don’t even know what’s on the menu, right?” He sniggers to himself. “Fish. It’s fish, hehe--”

“ _Please_!” Alex wails, and it’s loud enough this time to make Chuck jump and Mike startle.

“Okay,” Mike tells him. “Okay, dude, we got you. We'll take care of you. Chuck, can you get his pants off?” Whatever Alex needs, that'll make it easier.

“I--yeah, _fine,_ ” Chuck says, like it’s a trial, but he’s surprisingly quick and careful about getting Alex’s jeans undone. It’s… kind of weird, watching him do it, remembering that time Mike walked in and caught them both flushed and startled in the rec room.

He’s jolted out of that thought a second later, when Chuck gets a hand on Alex’s dick and Alex makes a noise so loud and musical and _strange_ it makes the hairs stand up on the back of Mike's neck. Chuck sways like there’s power in the noise, barely catches himself on one hand and has to stay there for a second, panting.

“ _Powers,_ dude!” he hisses at Alex. “Watch it!”

Mike rips open the box he's holding, drops it over the back of the sofa and offers Chuck the bottle of lube. “Here.”

“Sure,” says Chuck absently, and then promptly shoves a hand between Alex’s thighs, pushing his fingers up and unmistakably _in_ without so much as a “do you mind”.

“Dude!” Mike starts, startled and disturbed, but Alex cuts him off by arching his hips up like he’s been electrocuted, nails digging into the couch’s old upholstery so hard fabric tears. His mouth is open like he’s trying to scream, but all that comes out is a tiny, thin sound, breathless. Chuck groans too, soft and cracked and still somehow kind of pissed off.

“Holy _shit,_ ” he says, and braces a hand on Alex’s stomach, pushing him back down against the couch as his hand slowly works in and out, in and out. “...’S what you get when you stick your hands where they don’t belong, _Harley_.”

“Chuck,” Mike says, shooting him a stem look. “Be nice.” Then he has to ask. “So… he likes it, um, without…?”

“What?” says Chuck, and then “ _Oh_.” And then there’s that smile again, kind of cruel, kind of delighted. “Hey, Harley, you want Mike to touch you too, right?”

Alex jerks all over--in response to Chuck’s hand or what he just said, it isn’t really clear. “Want,” he slurs, repeating. “I, I want, I want. _Hh--!_ ”

“That’s what I figured,” says Chuck, and shifts his weight back, hooking his fingers under the waistband of Alex’s jeans and unceremoniously shoving them down to below his knees. “So show him what he’s workin’ with.”

Alex blinks up at him, and something sparks behind his eyes. Just for a second, there’s a hint of a snarl to his gasping, a furrow between his brows. “Wh,” he says, breathless fragments of words. “You. You’re. You-- _know_ I--”

“Mm?” says Chuck, and pulls away the hand between his legs. Alex bucks and wails in protest, grabbing desperately after him as he sits back. “Hey--hey! Don’t claw me! No. Go on, show Mike.”

“He doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to,” Mike says, glaring at Chuck. “Don't push him around just because he's--just because you can. That's not cool.” He strokes Alex's stomach, trying to soothe, and gets a full-body shiver and a little broken moan. Wow.

And--it’s not like Mike is staring or anything, it's just that Alex's dick is right there, and with Chuck out of the way it doesn't take more than a glance to see that he's… not made like any guy Mike’s seen. His dick looks normal enough, aside from faintly blue skin that gives the dark flush a lavender tint, but at this angle Mike can just tell he doesn't have anything below it. No balls.

Huh.

“Yeah, but he wants _you_ to see,” says Chuck, like this is a basic fact that Mike should know already, _come on_ _Mikey._ “And get your hands in there, _right?_ ” Another quick swipe of his fingers, another full-body twitch. Alex makes a noise that seems like it was supposed to be a growl, but mostly comes out as a whine. “He’s just embarrassed because he knows I’m--” He cuts himself off, shakes his head. “...I’m not making him do anything he doesn’t wanna do.”

That doesn’t seem _completely_ true, but there isn’t really any time to argue about it because a second later Alex lets out an agonized, frustrated groan and pulls his knees up, dropping his legs open with a shivering whine that--even across species--can’t read as anything but hopeful submission. Chuck returns the noise with a victorious, rattling croon and--

Everything between Alex's legs is in clear view now, and that's, there's--below his dick, where his balls would be, there's slick-shining skin around an opening, a slit, flushed lavender-pink and inviting, and Chuck slides his fingers back inside it, rewarding him in long, slow, easy thrusts that make Alex’s back flex and his legs tremble.

“Oh,” Mike says stupidly. “Uh. Wow.” He's pretty sure there's no reason that should be hot, but somehow it really, really is. His mouth is watering, he can smell the slick on Chuck's fingers as they pull out and slip back in. It smells salty-sweet and musky and he wants to taste it.

Which is normal! And totally reasonable. He's wer, werewolves like tasting and getting their noses in everything, it's a thing. A species trait, yeah, that's the phrase.

But Chuck’s already claimed that spot, and Alex needs all the help he can get, so okay. Mike folds over and licks the tip of Alex's dick, enjoying the shaky shocked noise he gets, then wraps a hand around the base and starts sucking. Siren precome, at least, tastes totally normal.

The taste is just about all the warning he gets, because it only takes about four seconds of their combined efforts before Alex is letting out a long stream of musical, desperate, unbroken sound and coming _hard_. Hard enough his nails tear more chunks out of the--already pretty sad--upholstery, hard enough when he arches his head back Mike can see the pulse fluttering in the thin skin under his jaw.

Chuck apparently sees the same thing he does, because a second later he's prowling up Alex's body, shoulders heaving, ears fluttering high and alert. His thumb rubs past Mike's cheek as Mike pulls back--with arms as long as Chuck's are, he can keep his fingers working slowly between Alex's legs as he mouths at that pounding pulse.

"This is such a bad idea,” he's muttering to himself, but absent, distracted, like he can't bring himself to care. “-- _You're such a bad idea why do I keep_ \--” And then he's sealing his mouth over Alex's neck, throat working as he drinks.

Alex doesn't even twitch at the bite. He's lying back, muscles still working in his belly and legs, twitching and shuddering weakly. His dick has softened a little, but it's still darkly flushed, and Mike wonders if they should stop touching him, let him recover. The soft noises he's making don't sound unhappy at all, though, so he must be okay.

Mike licks his lips, frowning at Chuck's blond head bowed over Alex's neck. It takes a minute to figure out why Chuck thinks it's a bad idea to drink from Alex right now, why Mike's instincts agree, but then he remembers the time Chuck drank from _him_ while he was in heat.

“Oh, hey,” he says, tugging gently at Chuck's shoulder. “You're right, dude, maybe you shouldn't do that.”

Chuck breaks away, gasps in a breath and glances back over his shoulder. For the first time, he seems to really notice how concerned Mike looks--his expression of indulgent frustration softens just a little bit.

“... _Mike,_ ” he starts, and glances down--cuts himself off to take another fast draw of Alex’s blood, then licks the wound shut. Alex gasps and shudders, head lolling back, eyes shut. He barely seems to be listening at this point, just shaking. Chuck throws him a look, thins his lips and then looks back to Mike. His cheeks are already starting to go flushed as whatever magic is in Alex’s blood creeps up on him, but he still manages a pretty firm frown.

“Look,” he says, and settles his weight back down on Alex’s thighs, ignoring the way Alex groans faintly and squirms at the pressure. “Mike. I know you’re, just, a really good guy, and you’ve probably never heard the words hate-sex before, like, in your _life--”_

“I've heard the _words_ ,” Mike protests automatically, and then catches up, thoroughly side-tracked. “Wait, you, you guys--oh.” Oh, wow, that's--Mike was kind of under the impression that good people didn't… do that. But looked at in this new light, Chuck and Alex make a _lot_ more sense, the time he caught them together, the way they act around each other. At least, as much as hate-sex makes sense to start with, which is admittedly not much.

“Yeah, ‘us guys _oh’_ ,” Chuck mutters. He’s going red to the tips of his ears, and not just from whatever was in Alex’s blood. He looks more intensely embarrassed talking about this than he did when he literally had his fingers inside somebody right in front of Mike. “If I touched those spells he’d be messing with me the same way.”

That’s a whole other thought, and not one that Mike can afford to think about too much. “And I'd tell him to cut it out too,” he points out. He pauses, trying to get his head around the whole hate-sex concept, blinking like that will help him focus on it. “Okay,” he says, when he thinks he's got it, giving Chuck a firm look. “Because the thing is, dude, you can't--okay so you really don't like the guy, I _know_ that, but. It's not fair when he's like this, you know? There's no point in doing this unless you're gonna help me help him out, and… be kind of careful with him,” he finishes lamely.

“He’ll pay me back _later!_ ” Chuck protests, and then sighs and slumps in response to the Mike’s continued disapproving stare. “...Fine. I’ll play super nice. The _nicest._ ” He strokes a feather-light fingertip up Alex’s dick on that word, and Alex jolts to life with a gasp, hips jerking into the touch. Chuck sniggers and leans in close to mumble something against one finned ear, soft enough even Mike has trouble picking it up. _So fucking nice you’ll--I won’t though, I’m--_ And whatever it is makes Alex’s dick twitch and his fins flick.

“It’s,” he says--the first words he’s said since Chuck got him pinned down. His voice is all warped and mangled with little chirps and clicks--higher, sweeter than the little batlike noises Mike is used to Chuck making. “I’m, it’s coming back, I, I can’t--”

Mike's not sure it actually went away in the first place--Alex didn't even get soft all the way before he was hardening up again. Heat is like that, and apparently so is this spell. That's not important enough to argue about, though.

“It's cool, dude,” he says, wrapping a hand around Alex's dick and stroking. “It's fine, we gotcha.” Man, Mike’s own dick is aching something fierce, trapped in his pants.

And then his hand stops moving, because--huh. “Hey,” he says, “you wanna actually have sex?”

Alex’s knees rise, spread, pull back together again. He makes a very tight, high noise. “I,” he says, and bites his lip, back arching. “Hha, I…” and his eyes kind of flicker towards Chuck, back to Mike, back to Chuck.

Chuck seems to know what that look means, at least, because he huffs. “We’ll _prep_ you,” he says impatiently. “I’m a jerk, I’m not an _asshole._ Here--kneel up.” He grabs Harley, grunts and lifts him bodily up, manhandling him up onto his knees with deceptive strength. Alex sways and then slumps forward against him, and Chuck shoves at him half-heartedly and then sighs and gives up. “Mike, get over here on the other side. You wanna help, right? I’ve got an idea I _know_ he’d like.”

Mike licks his lips, moving as ordered. Somehow now that he's thinking about sex, the heavy scent of want in the air is getting to him again, making him breathe faster.

“Okay,” he says, stroking a hand down Alex's back, mostly because he wants to touch, is suddenly skin-hungry even though he was sucking the guy's dick a minute ago. “Whatcha got, Chuckles?”

“He wants both of us, he can have both of us,” says Chuck, and cranes his neck a little to ghost his lips past one ear-fin. Alex jumps and gasps. “Hey! Wake up, Cadet Kane Co., we _value_ your _feedback._ I’ll take this…” Mike can’t see what he does with his hands, but by the faint, slick sound and the way Alex chokes on air he can guess. “...And Mike’s got plenty of lube back there.” His hand re-emerges, slick, and-- _oh_. Okay, well, it’s not like Mike was _avoiding_ looking at Alex’s butt before, but he’s _definitely_ looking now that Chuck’s got a handful of it. “He’s good at that, Harley. You should--” he draws back the hand he was groping Alex’s butt with, like he’s about to smack him--catches the look Mike flashes him and lowers his hand again with a sigh. “...You’ll like it.”

Okay, wow, that's--way different than Mike was expecting, way _more_. His heart is speeding up and he's gone hot all over. “Seriously?” he says, not sure if he's talking to Chuck or Alex. “Both of us at once? Isn't that kind of--” overwhelming, too much--he thinks about how he felt twenty minutes ago and swallows. No, there's no such thing as _too much_ in heat, or under this spell.

But he still wants to check. “Alex, you gotta say something, buddy. You really want us both, like this?”

Alex makes a long, conflicted noise, drops his head forward and bonks his forehead against Chuck’s shoulder. Chuck blinks, and Mike catches a flash of something startled and kind of weirdly tender on his face before he’s rolling his eyes and scrubbing a palm roughly against Alex’s shaved scalp. “Loser,” he says, almost affectionately. “Don’t get overwhelmed or anything, it’s a pretty simple question.”

Alex makes an irritated little chittering noise under his breath, shifts and shoves himself back up, animated by annoyance. “I _said_ yes!” he gets out, clearer than he has been since the spells hit him. “Hhhhffffuck you!”

“I think you mean fuck _me,_ ” says Chuck smugly, and then glances up at Mike’s wince and heaves a sigh. “--Sorry, okay! He’s--it’s how we do stuff.”

Well, it does seem like when he wakes up enough to communicate, Alex isn't exactly distressed about his situation, including the way Chuck's kind of being a jerk to him. Mike makes a mental note to let the whole hate-sex thing go for the moment, although he's gonna keep an eye on it.

“Okay,” he says, breathless and kind of hoarse, and opens his pants, shoves them down his thighs with a low groan of relief. “We got you, dude,” he says, putting a hand on Alex's hip, then sliding it back to his butt. “Have you ever, um…?”

Alex’s head jerks a little. Chuck makes a ludicrous little noise, sputtering. “Yeah, right!” he says. “You want me to believe you _topped_ , like, _exclusively_ \--”

Alex hisses something out, jerks his head to one side so Chuck has to pull back or get headbutted. Chuck’s eyebrows ratchet up behind his bangs. “Okay,” he says, and some of the mean laughter is gone from his voice. “Oh. Well--okay then. Well, don’t worry, _Commander,_ we’ll do the hard parts for you. You just sit there and try not to--cry, or anything.”

Mike can't help giving Chuck a look for that, resolution to let it go or not. He grabs the bottle of lube and tries not to spill it everywhere getting his fingers slick. If Alex hasn't done this before, Mike’s gotta be careful, especially because Alex is in no condition to be careful himself.

“Okay,” he says, setting the bottle down and stroking Alex's hip. “Just try to relax, okay?” He presses one finger in, biting his lip at how tight it is.

“Relax,” Chuck is mumbling on the other side of him, rubbing the nape of Harley’s neck with one distracted hand. His face is still all red, and this close there are beads of sweat on the bridge of his nose and his pupils are blown out dark under his bangs. He mouths at the side of Alex’s neck, bites down again, and Alex twitches all over and then goes limp, some of the trembling tension leaving his muscles. Chuck smiles just enough to bare a flash of bloody fangs, and then closes his eyes and just drinks.

Mike sits back on his haunches, pants bunching around his thighs, and strokes gently up inside Alex to find his prostate. Alex lets out a sweet shivering sound when he finds it, and Mike focuses on getting more of those noises out of him, rubbing easy little circles right over that spot until he starts to loosen up.

The air is full of salt and need and musk in three different flavors and Mike’s mouth is watering. He pushes another finger into Alex, leans forward and licks a stripe up his spine. The skin there is strange and smooth and cool, a faint sheen of flexing scale over the muscle. Chuck just keeps _drinking_ , and the longer he does the more the tips of his ears go flushed and the more eager the smell of him gets. After a few minutes he pulls back, gasps in a breath and makes a _really_ inhuman noise, possessive and aggressive. His wings flare out wide on either side of him, mantling around the three of them, and all of a sudden he's crowding up into Alex's space. Every time his hand moves there's a slick sound, a moan or a caught breath from Alex, and a rise and fall in the sharp, wanting smell in the air.

"Wh… what," Alex gasps, and Chuck opens his fangs, resting them on Alex's throat, not biting, just… holding him there. It's a strange, wordless, animal gesture, and it's kind of freaking Mike out for a second before Alex slurs, "Stoppit, _Redacted_ ," and slaps aimlessly at the side of Chuck's head. Chuck growls, then blinks, then pulls back and gasps in a couple of deep breaths, blinking like he's concussed.

"D'nnn," he says. "Don't--what did I fu--freakin'--say about that?"

"So stop being a--creepy--weird--" Alex smacks at him again. "-- _Vampire!_ ”

Mike rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and gets briefly distracted by the thick layers of vines growing up there, cascades of glowing flowers shining among the leaves. “You guys need to chill,” he sighs, looking back down. “And Chuck, seriously buddy, I think you should stop drinking from him, you've had enough, okay? Alex, how you doing, this feel okay?” he adds, fingers thrusting gently. Alex isn't as tight now, loosening up, and if he and Chuck will just stop bickering for two minutes, maybe they can all get this thing started.

“I’ll _ahh_ , I’ll _hh--_ ’chill’ if _he_ \-- _ohmygod,_ ” Alex hisses, and his hips jerk erratically as Chuck grumbles and licks his latest bite shut. “He’s--drinking _blood!_ ”

“You’ve got gills, I’m not complaining,” Chuck growls, slurring, and does something sharp with a hand that makes Alex let out an abrupt, screechy cry and clutch at him, white-knuckled. “...Doing you a f--a ffffavor, remember?” He sways a little, blinks big, dark, unfocused eyes and has to slump forward onto Alex’s shoulder for a second, panting. “... _Fuck._ ”

“Chuckles?” Mike says, frowning. “You okay, dude? Holy smokes--are you drunk?! I told you not to drink from him when he's got this spell on him!”

“--’M not _drunk_ ,” Chuck says petulantly. “I’m just. ‘S just, siren blood! Messes with, with your brain, like _basically everything_ about. ‘Bout sirens. I’m not drunk, okay? I did it before, so. I’ve got a tolerance now, uh… probably.”

Mike snorts. “Yeah, okay. Not drunk, got it. You think you can handle this, or are you gonna need to lie down?” Chuck and Alex smell so _good_ , it's making it hard to concentrate, but Mike is good at staying on track, keeping his eye on the goal. He pulls his fingers out of Alex with a last stroke over his prostate and gets some more lube, slicking up.

“'M good, 'm fine,” Chuck says, nuzzling distractedly at Alex's throat, and Mike makes a sharp noise when he opens his mouth against Alex's skin.

“Do _not_ bite him again, Chuck, you've had enough! Come on, if you're fine then prove it, let's do this.”

Chuck hisses sulkily, but then he pulls away and there's a slick sound that makes Alex whine desperately, hands pawing at the air as he reaches for both of them, Chuck and Mike. “ _Hnn_ \--no, please, please--”

Chuck is shoving his jeans down, scoffing. “You're not gonna die if we stop touching you for two seconds, chill--”

“You're fine, we've got you, you're gonna be okay,” Mike says, hands stroking Alex's hips and thighs. “You first, yeah?” he tells Chuck, and Chuck nods distractedly, edging forward, one hand coming to rest just above Mike's on Alex's waist. His wings twitch and a shiver goes through him as his hips shift, pressing in, and then Alex lets out a sweet, musical moan that seems to weight and twist the air. Chuck's eyes go blank and he starts moving a lot faster, no time for adjustment before he's thrusting, which makes Alex make even more noise.

Mike sighs and swats Alex on the hip, which gets a cracked yelp. “Watch your power, dude,” Mike says firmly, and the whimper in response sounds much more like a guy who just desperately wants more, and a lot less like siren song.

Chuck is still moving, too far gone on Alex's blood to even care about being influenced, so Mike goes ahead and pushes in too, as slow as he can manage. Alex is shaking between them, making tiny cut-off noises and gasping for breath. He's warm and slick and tight, the air is thick with his need and Chuck’s, and Mike has to bite his lip hard to keep from just letting go and pounding him. It's what Alex needs, just go ahead and give it to him--no, gotta take it slow, can't hurt him, he's never done this before.

Sweat breaking out between his shoulder blades, Mike waits until the tight clench around his dick eases before he starts to move, slow and easy. It takes three strokes before Alex clamps down around him, hips jerking, and the wail he lets out makes Mike's ears go back. _Man_ he's loud.

Then he's going slack, slumping back against Mike, and Mike catches him and stops moving with an intense effort Chuck isn't bothering with. “You okay?” Mike pants. “Need us to quit?”

Alex whimpers and his head jerks to the side. “Nn… d’n…”

“Keep going?”

A half-nod, and Mike breathes out and lets his hips start moving again. Alex moans faintly, but he stays a mostly-limp weight resting against Mike. Mike holds him steady and works up to a good rhythm, Chuck making high, breathless, cracked sounds on Alex's other side. It feels really good, but Mike has to hold on, has to make sure it's good for Alex too, which honestly probably means lasting as long as he can. Unless the spell lets up, this is going to take a while.

\--

Alex drifts, endless waves of pleasure and need washing through him. His skin is hot and incredibly sensitive, every touch lighting him up like fireworks so he craves it, moans for it. Hands are on him, clawing and clutching or careful and steadying, hard bodies pressed on either side of him, moving in him. It feels good, exactly what he needs, what his body cries out for. He loses track of how many times the heat surges higher in him, burning, aching, until the hands shift or come back and he's given what he incoherently begs for.

Some of the time he's barely conscious, just aware that he wants and he's being helped and it's okay. Sometimes there are lucid moments, fever-bright and vivid--Chuck slumped under him, one hand on Alex's dick, clumsily jerking him off as Mike pounds into him from behind, heavy wolfish fangs set on the back of Alex's neck, a low throbbing noise rumbling against his skin. Later, Alex on his back, squirming and whimpering as Chuck teases him and snickers, long fingers stroking into him and out again without giving him enough to satisfy. Mike appearing again and huffing at Chuck, sliding something slick and smooth and almost too thick into Alex's slit, making him arch and wail and beg at how good it feels, almost enough.

He vaguely notices Chuck going off somewhere for a minute at that point, but doesn't know why until Chuck comes back with a second one, another smooth, sleek shape, and rolls Alex over onto his stomach. Chuck takes the opportunity to grope his butt again, like he didn't get enough the first time, spreading his cheeks to shove the toy in while Alex whines and chirps desperately--and then screams when Chuck does something that triggers both toys to vibrate.

It feels like the top of Alex's head comes off when he hits orgasm, and he's only vaguely aware of writhing around moaning and clawing at the couches for a while after that. At some point Chuck gets bored and pulls out the dildo in front to get his dick in Alex again, and then Alex is moaning and writhing under _him_ , and then lucidity gets swallowed again by the heat in his veins.

The next time he's really aware again, Chuck is leaning up on an elbow to tease Alex's dick with one finger, looking disheveled and sated and sleepy, and there are strong arms holding Alex from behind--Mike, he's sitting in Mike's lap as Mike rocks up into him almost too hard. The restless, driving need that had Alex losing his mind is still there, but less than it was, a low, curling warmth in his gut instead of heat like glowing plasma. He still wants, but now he has the attention to notice he's sore too, everything from his ass, stretched around Mike, to his empty slit, to his dick _aching_ with a hot, overused throb.

“Ow,” he mumbles, and squirms a little, like that could possibly help.

Mike's thrust hitches in startlement. “You okay, buddy?”

“Sore,” Alex manages. “ _Hh_ , hurts, _no_ don't stop!”

“Come on, bro, he obviously still needs it,” Chuck says, smirking, and leans in to nip sharply at a hip bone, making Alex yelp and smack at him. Chuck hisses irritably and pulls away and Alex whimpers at the loss of the touch on his dick. Even the tease was better than nothing.

“Yeah, but if he's sore,” Mike starts, ignoring them, and he's stopped moving completely now, this is the worst, “shouldn't we--dude, I can pull out and just jerk you off,” he tells Alex. “I don't have to--”

“Noo,” Alex moans, squirming back against him, “more, give, please?”

Mike gives a soft, breathless huff, hips jerking forward. “Okay! Okay, you got it,” he says, and starts moving again. He's thrusting more gently now, careful with Alex, but considering how rough Alex is starting to feel he's not about to complain. How does it still feel so good when he's all overworked and stretched-out and achy, it doesn't make any sense.

Mike gets rougher as he gets close, but he also reaches around to grab Alex's dick and start stroking, and Alex finds it hard to care about the discomfort when it's so _good_ and he needs it _so much_. He comes with a choked wail and slumps, held in place by Mike's arms around him, distantly conscious of the now-frantic thrusting going on a moment longer before Mike goes still, twitching.

“ _Whoof_ ,” Mike mutters, and carefully pulls out, leaning Alex against the back of one sofa. Grabbing something off the floor, Mike gets Alex cleaned up with some soft cloth, his touch gentle enough that Alex doesn't even whimper. The soft thing is Mike's t-shirt, he realizes when he opens his eyes for a minute.

Chuck looks half-asleep, curled up a little farther down the sofas. He's lying there all disheveled and smug and sticky, like a big jerk, and he probably wouldn't kiss Alex even if Alex wanted him to. Which he doesn't, obviously.

“Aww, haha,” Mike says, grinning at Chuck. “You're so cute, Chuckles.” He crawls past Alex and ruffles Chuck's hair, then leans down to kiss him. Chuck chirps and reaches up to hold him in place. Alex swallows and looks away.

Yeah, _Mike's_ not going to kiss Alex, either, because they're not like that, which is fine, obviously. This was a one-time thing to help Alex out, it's not, like, a _thing_ now. It's not like Mike's going to touch Alex _willingly_ , not like he does Chuck.

Trust Chuck to flaunt it.

Well, Alex may not have gotten to kiss Mike, but at least he got to have amazing sex with him, whether or not Chuck likes it. The next time Chuck is a jerk, Alex will just point out that he knows exactly how good Chuck's _boyfriend_ is in bed. That should be good for some furious sputtering.

...God, Alex is such an idiot. He's fantasized about being in bed with both of them like a hundred times and now that it's actually _happened_ by some bizarre fluke he's _sad_ because it's just sex and that's somehow not enough for him, apparently. That's so stupid. He's so stupid.

He's trying not to watch the two of them, because just because he's not actually a part of this doesn't mean he needs his face shoved in it any harder, and that's why he yelps when Mike wraps an arm around him and tugs him over next to him.

“Haha, hey,” Mike says, grinning at him, and leans in, and just casually noses into Alex's neck, kind of… nuzzling. Alex squeaks, but Mike just keeps doing it, rubbing his forehead up against Alex's jaw, his nose and cheek against Alex's neck over his gills. Alex's ear fins flick uncertainly. What Mike's doing feels… nice? Very wer, very instinct-driven, but nice. Warm, and close, and--is this cuddling? It feels kind of like cuddling. Mike's holding him and sort of… breathing into Alex's neck, and they're both naked because they just had sex--it seems like this might qualify, yeah.

On Mike's other side, Chuck makes a huffy little disgruntled noise and shoves himself upright to lean pointedly against Mike. Mike laughs against Alex's skin and wraps his other arm around Chuck, but he doesn't let go of Alex, just holds them both close and sighs contentedly. It's really, really nice.

Kind of too nice to be believed, it feels like. It doesn't mean what Alex wants it to, it's not enough for the hungry, uncertain part of him. He's used to that, though. This is a lot more than he expected, so he's fine.

“You okay, dude?” Mike says after a minute, and Alex realizes he just sighed out loud.

Chuck groans before he can answer. “Mikey, he's fine, ignore him. He just wants attention.”

“Wasn't asking you, buddy,” Mike says. “Are you really sore?” he asks Alex, like he's actually concerned.

Alex shifts his leg, like, a fraction of an inch and winces. He kind of is, actually, but that's not the main problem. If there was a problem, which there isn't, because he's _fine_.

He gives Mike a half-smile and shrugs. “It's fine.”

Mike winces. “Sorry, dude. You just kept going, you know? And you got upset if we stopped touching you, so--”

“So we gave him what he needed and he's _fine_ , Mike,” Chuck says, “he said so.” He glances around Mike at Alex and smirks meanly, one fang gleaming. “He's just… sensitive.” His eyes slide over Alex's body and despite how much sex they just had, Alex swears he looks _intrigued_. Like the thought of Alex laid out and shivering from _too much_ really does it for him, the dick.

Fortunately Alex is too worn out to be much affected by that idea himself, so he just swallows hard and glares.

Mike huffs and nudges Chuck. “Cut it out. Do your weird mean-flirting thing on your own time.”

“I'm not--Mikey!” Chuck squawks, and Alex snickers, and then Mike gives _him_ a look and he hastily stops and looks apologetic instead.

Mike rolls his eyes. “You guys,” he mutters, “I don't get it.”

Alex catches Chuck's eye by mistake and he can tell both of them are sharing the thought that Mike is way too straightforward for hate-sex. He likes things simple, and he's such a sweet guy, no wonder he doesn't understand.

Then Alex remembers--everything; what's going on, that Mike is Chuck's, that he can't have any more than he's already gotten--and drops his gaze again, and Chuck snorts.

“For fuck’s sake, Harley.”

“What?!” Alex says.

“Just spit it out!” Chuck says.

“Wha--I'm not--I wasn't trying to say anything!”

“Well then, whatever it is!” Chuck says, glaring.

“Dude, what are you talking about?” Mike says.

Chuck makes a disgusted chittering noise and Alex hisses back. “Did you not notice the big sad eyes act going on over there?” Chuck demands of Mike, waving a hand at Alex.  "He's waiting for somebody to ask him what's wrong, I'm just getting it over with!"

“Oh fuck you, I am not!” Alex snaps.

“You kinda smell like you are, buddy,” Mike says apologetically. “And yeah, but I figured he'd say something if there was anything we could do, you know?” he answers Chuck.

Chuck snorts again. “Yeah, no, he'd rather feel sorry for himself and pretend he's being noble or some shit. He keeps _watching_ you. So what is it already, Harley?”

Alex face heats and his ear fins are flicking in agitation. “Nothing! Okay, just--I'm _fine!_ Shut up!”

“Oh wow, yeah, that was highly plausible, I completely believed that,” Chuck says.

“Chuckles,” Mike sighs, and turns to Alex. “Seriously, dude,” he says, eyes earnest on Alex's, “if we can do something to help, you just have to let us know, okay?” The arm around Alex's shoulders squeezes.

Held by those eyes, now more brown than gold, Alex swallows and drops his forehead against Mike's shoulder. If he says it, Chuck is gonna make fun of him. But if he doesn't say it, there's no chance at all he'll get it.

“I want a kiss,” he says in a very low voice.

As expected, Chuck huffs, although it sounds more exasperated than scornful, but when Alex dares to look up, Mike's eyes are still intent on his face. “Yeah?” Mike says. “Okay.” He pulls loose from Chuck and the arm around Alex shifts, draws him in. Mike's other hand comes up to Alex's face and Mike smiles, leans in, kisses him.

It's not the friendly little peck Alex was expecting, not even with a quick, teasing brush of tongue. It's long and deep and breathless, and in the end _he's_ the one who has to break off panting, because his exhausted dick just throbbed and reminded him how sore he is, how unready to start anything again.

Mike's still smiling at him, warm and amused and- _-affectionate_ , oh. “Better?”

“I--yeah,” Alex says dumbly as his entire face lights on fire.

Chuck makes another huffy noise. “Dumbass,” he says, and before Mike can get on his case again, basically climbs across Mike to grab Alex and kiss him hard. Chuck is way less sweet about it than Mike was, forceful and pushy, nipping Alex's lips almost hard enough to break skin and then sucking on his tongue until Alex whimpers into his mouth.

He looks really irritatingly smug when he pulls away, but Alex is so floored he can't even manage to glare. “There,” Chuck says, going back to his spot on the other side of Mike. “Next time instead of looking all mopey, just _ask_.”

“Well,” Alex sputters, “how was I supposed to know you guys were--that you'd--”

“Yeah, right,” Chuck says, “that's definitely how questions work, genius, you only ask when you're already certain you're gonna get the right answer. That'll get you _real_ far.”

“Chuck, come on,” Mike says in mild reproof, and Chuck huffs and settles in to snuggle against him again.

Alex cautiously leans into Mike himself, into the arm around his shoulders, something soft and warm and pleased expanding in his chest. They kissed him. Mike _and_ Chuck both. Like they _like_ him--well, not Chuck, Chuck doesn't like him exactly, but he obviously _wants_ Alex, and Mike seems to like him, let him come along on this trip and talks to him and smiles at him and _kissed_ him. Granted, Alex had to ask first, but it wasn't a quick technical kiss like he didn't want to, it was way better than that. More.

Like maybe there's a chance that Mike would be willing to do some other stuff with him at some point. Wow. Alex seriously didn't expect that. He bites back a giddy grin.

“So,” Chuck says after a minute, and the tone of his voice brings Alex to attention, because it's just a little too casual. “There's no car parts here, which was the entire point of this trip--”

“I _know_ ,” Mike groans. “I mean, it seemed like a reasonable guess from the sign! And the guy who tipped Jacob off obviously agreed, so it wasn't just me.”

“But since we came all this way,” Chuck goes on, ignoring that, and Alex throws a look at him to check if he's going where Alex thinks he is with this, “and we've got your satchel,” Chuck totally is, “we may as well take, y’know, whatever seems useful, right?”

“Uh,” Mike says.

“Definitely,” Alex says firmly, nodding. “Only sensible.”

“But, I mean,” Mike says, and if Alex isn't mistaken, he's looking a little flushed again, “what would we _do_ with all this stuff?”

Alex has to bite his lip not to answer that one.

“Mikey,” Chuck says, “think for a second.” Alex kind of thinks Mike _is_ , and the flush on his pointed ears is getting darker. “Do you know what the Duke would give us for some of these toys?”

Mike goes rigid, his fingers digging into Alex's shoulder. “We are _not_ giving him those spell things! He’d totally misuse them!”

“Oh, what, the aphrodisiac things? _Hell_ no,” Chuck agrees. “No _way_ is he getting his hands on that stuff, no.”

“I bet there are people who'd be safe to give them, though,” Alex suggests.

“Like Rayon,” Chuck says. “That seems like the kind of thing the Skylarks would handle and distribute responsibly.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” Mike says. He's frowning slightly, and Alex guesses he's still dubious about it, but he doesn't argue anymore. Chuck briefly catches Alex's eye, and there's something in the curve of Chuck's lips that makes Alex very sure he's planning to keep back a set of spell-imbued items and toys for… personal use. Possibly he's thinking specifically for use on someone else, like, by the glint in Chuck's eye, to drive crazy someone you think is hot but are totally still holding a grudge against because you're a _jerk_. Alex narrows his eyes and gives Chuck the edge of a smirk. _We'll see who drives who crazy_.

“I guess,” Mike says slowly, interrupting the silent communication unawares, “it could be a good plan to hold onto some of the stuff for, like, heat. I mean, toys aren't enough, but they help, and I bet magic ones would work better.” He glances at Chuck and Alex on either side of him, checking for backup.

“No, absolutely,” Alex says heartily, “really good plan.”

“I mean why not?” Chuck agrees. “It only makes sense. Good use of resources.”

“Yeah,” Mike says with more confidence. “Yeah, cool.”

“Plus it's not like lube and basic supplies are ever not useful,” Alex adds.

“Mm,” Chuck says, which Alex guesses means he can't find a way to snark at that without casting doubt on the rationale they're feeding Mike. “Right, well, may as well get started.” He clambers off the double couch and starts tugging on his clothes, and Mike gives Alex a friendly one-armed squeeze and follows suit. Alex, of course, is both the guy who got really thoroughly pounded for an unreasonable length of time ending like, five minutes ago, and the only non-human here without much in the way of a special healing factor, so he gets himself up and standing much more carefully, resisting a wince at every step.

He dresses as fast as he can manage, though. He has no doubt Chuck's going to be surreptitiously studying every toy he picks up, looking for the perfect combination to make Alex completely lose it, and there's no way Alex is going to let him win that easy.

Alex is pretty sure their first encounter counted as a draw, considering that Chuck was too drunk on Alex's blood to walk by the end of it, even if Chuck _did_ turn him over the sofa and fuck him first. This time, though, the intoxication had time to wear off, so Chuck looks pretty steady on his feet, and Alex… yeah, Alex obviously lost this round. So he's going to take note of available resources just like Chuck is, and plan carefully, and when he approaches Chuck after a long enough time to make it clear he's not desperate or anything--say, next week--he's absolutely going to win.

If Chuck asks nicely enough, Alex might even invite Mike.


End file.
